


Gravity and Inertia

by purpleeyesandbowties



Category: Julie and The Phantoms (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Fluff, M/M, Post Season 1, Soulmarks, i guessed at willie's timeline and put his death in about 2005
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-09
Updated: 2020-11-09
Packaged: 2021-03-09 00:21:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,567
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27461881
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/purpleeyesandbowties/pseuds/purpleeyesandbowties
Summary: Willie has been fighting gravity and inertia all his life. His soulmate dies when he's eight years old and he thinks that's the end of it. He would, of course, be wrong about that.
Relationships: Alex/Willie (Julie and The Phantoms)
Comments: 15
Kudos: 285





	Gravity and Inertia

**Author's Note:**

> hello i have had this show for less than 24 hours but if anything happens to it i will kill everyone in this room and then myself  
> i totally guessed on Willie's timeline. I decided he was 18 (assuming that Alex is about 17 ish) and that Willie died in 2005 and has been a ghost for 15 years when he finds Alex.

Willie was born with his mark. One of his palms and half of the front side of his shoulder were darkened by the magic that declared half of his soul belonged to someone else. That was where the first contact between them would take place—the first touching of their bodies against each other. Over and over again in his childhood, Willie wondered what would make them touch in that way. Many people had imprints of hands, but they were usually on arms, clasped in handshakes, deliberate touches on shoulders. His were messy, smeared, unclear. Just like the rest of his life, he had thought bitterly, one bad day when he was fifteen. By then, he didn’t have to worry about how he’d meet his soulmate. They were dead. 

Willie was eight years old, trying out his older brother’s too-big skateboard, too impatient to wait another four weeks for the board he knew he was getting for his ninth birthday. It was late at night, way later than any eight-year-old should be on the street. But he had Thomas with him and the streetlight shone brighter than the moon and something in the wind whispered _faster, faster._ So he buckled his helmet, stepped cautiously on the board, and pushed off. Thomas whooped and cheered as Willie wobbled his way down the street. He gained confidence and speed as he went until the whip of air past him sounded like a victory song. _Faster, faster,_ it chanted, so he obliged it. And then, out of nowhere, hot, searing pain dragged through him. He lost his balance and crashed to the ground. He might have screamed. He definitely cried. Thomas ran to him and dropped to his knees.

“Willie? Willie, what’s wrong? Did you fall? Did you hurt yourself?” he asked, hands searching out broken bones and blood. Through tears, Willie managed to say, “it hurts, Tom, it hurts a lot.”

“What does, buddy?” Thomas asked. He reached to pull his little brother up, but Willie screamed the second Tom touched his hand. Willie clutched it against his stomach, curling in as if that would stop the pain.

“Let me see,” Thomas said urgently, and gently pried Willie’s hand open. 

Willie’s soul marks had always been dark, several shades darker than his natural skin, but they shimmered with something most people refused to call magic. Now, though, that shimmer was gone, and the marks turned angry red, like an open wound. Thomas had to touch it to make sure it wasn’t actually bleeding. He swore under his breath and yanked Willie’s shirt up to look at his shoulder, at the mark that had been there since the day Willie had been born. It, too, looked angry and inflamed. Slowly, Thomas pulled down Willie’s shirt, hiding the ugly mark.

“What’s happening to me?” Willie asked tearfully, curling up into a ball again. Thomas gathered Willie up into a hug the best he could, wishing someone else could explain this, this thing that no one wanted to talk about. 

Wishing his little brother didn’t have to know it. Not yet.

“Your soulmate,” Thomas started. “Something bad happened to them. Your soul is responding to the pain they’re in.”

“Why are they in pain?” Willie asked. He pressed his hand against his chest, right where his heart was.

Thomas swallowed, hard. There were ways to break the news to kids, he knew there were. But he didn’t know the right words. So instead, he settled on the truth.

“They’re dying.”

“Dying?”

Willie made a sound, caught between a cough, a sob, and a scream, as another wave of pain seemed to rush through him. Thomas squeezed him tighter.

“They can’t die, I haven’t met them yet,” Willie whimpered. Slowly, he uncurled himself and pushed himself up onto his knees, then to his feet. He staggered with the effort of it.

“What are you doing?” Thomas asked.

“Gotta find them,” Willie grit out. “I don’t want them to die alone. I haven’t met them yet. I gotta find them. They can’t die alone.”

He repeated it under his breath with every labored step, Thomas trailing behind, useless to help, until at last the pain was too much. Willie passed out on the sidewalk. His helmet hit the sidewalk with a _crack,_ protecting him from outward harm. The last thing he heard was his brother, crying. The last thing he thought was _I’m too late._

—

When he woke up, his soulmarks had scarred over, like wounds. The pain was gone, but so was the magic. Whoever Willie’s soulmate had been, they were gone. Too late. 

—

Ten years later, once again on his skateboard, a car pulled out in front of him, blaring its horn as if that would be enough to make him move, as if he didn’t have gravity and inertia working against him. This time, his helmet wasn’t enough to save him. As he died, he thought, _at least my soulmate died first. I wouldn’t want them to live through this pain._

Someone was shouting, there were lights and sirens and he heard, faintly, his name repeated by a voice that sounded like his mother. It was too bright. He wanted to sleep.

_Wish I could have met them, though,_ he thought, and closed his eyes.

—

Being dead, in Willie’s opinion, was almost better than being alive. Yes, there had been some bad days, early days, when he had raged and wept and tried to get someone, anyone, to notice him. The bad days passed, and by his second year of the afterlife, he’d found other ghosts, made a deal that would let him skateboard all he wanted, and even made some friends. Part of him whispered that making a deal with Caleb was the wrong thing to do, but the other option was to rot away in grief and misery. At least this way, he could still skate, and Caleb did know how to throw a good party. It was a pretty good non-life, all things considered.

He was close to reaching equilibrium—in three years, he would be dead the same amount of time he’d been alive—when he felt a twinge in his palm, the long-scarred-over tissue where his soulmark used to be. It made him feel like a kid again, scared and hurting. He clenched the hand tight and grabbed his skateboard, resolving to push it out of his mind. He spent over a day on his board, ranging all over the city. Another upside of being a ghost: he didn’t have to sleep and rarely got tired or felt the need to rest. For a dude who always had too much energy, he’d adapted to it much easier than some other ghosts who still went through the motions of pretending to sleep at night. He was on one of his favorite stretches of road, the walk of fame, having fun blowing through and past tourists and actors, when something unexpected happened—he hit someone. Instinctively, he put his hand out to brace himself for impact. Gravity and inertia still had it out for him, apparently, because he slammed into the wall of muscle in front of him, jarring his wrist painfully and knocking the wind out of them both. They landed on the sidewalk, hard, and Willie took a moment to be grateful no one could see exactly how lame that had been. He stood up, groaning. 

“Oh man, you dinged my board,” he moaned, inspecting the thing mournfully. The guy he’d crashed into made a disbelieving noise.

“I dinged your board? Dude, you ran me over, you’re lucky I didn’t—”

He cut himself off, frowning, gears clearly turning in his head. Willie stifled a smile. He felt bad for slamming into him, but the dude was ridiculously cute, even in his obvious confusion.

He talked with the ghost for a few more minutes, not able to stop himself from giggling and flirting a little, even if just to see the man’s confusion again.

It was only as he was skating off, watching out of the corner of his eye for Alex following him, that he realized his palm and shoulder were tingling. Right where they smacked into each other. Right where his soulmarks used to be.

—

The idea that Alex might be his soulmate itched in the back of Willie’s head for days. Disbelief, skepticism, and even elation warred for a place in his head. Something warm and fragile sputtered in his stomach every time he saw Alex or made him laugh. Even if it probably wasn’t true, he wanted to _try,_ wanted to see if there was the slightest chance he could be right.

Even after his terrible mistake—stupid of him to bring him to Caleb, he shouldn't have _done_ that—something pulled him back to Alex. He only got caught twice, but he had whooshed in to snatch a glance at him at least a few times a day. More than anything, he just wanted to make sure that Alex was still there, still not-alive but still okay, even without him around. It took everything in him to turn away after getting that tantalizing, reassuring glance. 

Their goodbye was worse than dying. At least when he had died, he’d been pretty much resigned to it. His only wish was that he could have met his soulmate. Well, that was done, and all he had to show for it was an aching heart, the memory of yelling together in a museum, and a hug that was far too fleeting to be satisfying. He’d wasted precious seconds of that hug, frozen in disbelief and uncertainty. By the time he’d gotten with the program and hugged back, Alex was pulling back, backing away.

“See you around, hotdog,” Willie said, forcing a light tone, and tore himself away from Alex’s orbit. Skating away had never felt so wrong.

—

The day after the show at the Orpheum, Willie set out for the walk of fame, determined to get back to a regular afterlife. Alex had crossed over. The Orpheum had to have been his unfinished business. There was nothing else that would keep him tethered to the world—not even Willie. He wasn’t self-centered enough to think that they were actually soulmates. Maybe they might have been in life, or maybe it was a crazy coincidence and he’d imagined the connection between them. 

Or maybe he wasn’t crazy. Maybe they were actually soulmates. Maybe Willie had lost his one chance at fulfilling his literal dying wish. If it was true (it _was_ true, a corner of his mind insisted, and he didn’t have it in him to pretend it was wrong) the only good thing to come of it was that Caleb never found out. It would have been a weakness too delicious for him to resist exploiting.

He scoffed and pushed the thought from his mind, strapping his helmet on. He pushed off, pouring on more speed than was safe, even for a dead guy. A flash of pink caught his eye, making him wobble for a perilous second. He shook his head to clear it, banishing the prickle of incoming tears. Lots of people wore pink sweatshirts. He couldn’t lose it every time he saw one. He needed to be stronger than that. He’d nearly convinced himself of this when he heard someone call out, “Hey! Willie! Wait up!” 

Gravity and inertia worked against him one more time. He slammed into a fire hydrant and went butt over heels on the pavement, skidding painfully to a stop.

“This is a familiar scene,” Alex joked, jogging up and offering his hand. Willie took it automatically and let himself get pulled to his feet. When he was safely on his feet, though, he didn’t drop Alex’s hand. He squeezed it, tighter than he’d ever held on to anything before, and Alex let him.

“You’re here,” Willie said.

“I am,” Alex agreed. He looked different, even sounded different. There was a looseness to his shoulders, something in the way he walked that looked freer and easier. In contrast, Willie felt like he was a breath from falling over, shaky and buzzing with some unspeakable emotion.

“How?” he asked simply.

Alex shrugged. “I guess I have more I need to do.”

“Like what?”

Alex grinned and took Willie’s other hand, holding both his hands between them.

“Like see you again,” he murmured. 

Like the gravity that had pulled him to the ground as an eight-year-old, like the inertia that sent him smashing into a taxi at eighteen, whatever pulled him to Alex was a force of nature that could not be disobeyed. He cupped Alex’s face with one hand, the other snaking around his waist, drawing him closer.

“I’m going to kiss you now, hotdog,” Willie informed him seriously. Alex blinked and reared back slightly in surprise, but Willie’s arm tightened around him, pulling them flush again. Still, he hesitated, his eyes half-open, watching Alex’s face. Alex’s eyes slid shut and his lips parted slightly, waiting. When no kiss happened, Alex cracked one eye open.

“I thought you were going to kiss me,” he said softly, a hint of a question in his voice. 

“I thought so, too,” Willie said honestly. His thumb caught the edge of Alex’s chapped lower lip. 

“What’s stopping you?”

“I don’t know. I’ve waited so long for this.”

“Dude, we’ve known each other for like, a week.”

Willie shook his head. “I’m talking about the lifetimes before and after I died.” He dropped his hand from Alex’s face, turning his palm upward to show the scarred flesh. 

“When I died, my soulmate was already dead. My dying wish was to have met them, just once. You’re my unfinished business, Alex.”

Alex took a breath, audible, and Willie could feel him start to tremble, just a little.

“So—so if I kiss you, will your unfinished business be done? Will you leave me?” Alex asked, and, ah, there was the underlying anxiety that was second nature to Alex. Willie smiled and pressed a kiss to Alex’s lips. He pulled back quickly and said, “apparently not.”

He pulled Alex into a deeper kiss, a proper one this time. “I’m not finished with you,” he said against Alex’s lips.

“Good,” Alex breathed back. He grabbed the back of Willie’s neck and kissed him again. While they kissed, Alex took Willie’s hand and guided his fingers to the neckline of his shirt. He slipped Willie’s hand down his neck and back, where Willie could feel the raised, slightly-puffy flesh, a familiar texture, one that Willie had felt on his own skin for most of his life and afterlife.

“When I came back, my marks were scarred over. I thought my soulmate had died while I was trapped in that black room. I guess I was right, in a way.”

“I’m sorry for pancaking you like that,” Willie whispered.

“Don’t be,” Alex said. “It brought you to me.”

“And now we’re here to stay. Both of us,” Willie finished. 

Here was another great thing about being a ghost: he could kiss his soulmate in the middle of a crowded, bustling street, and not a single person would be bothered by it. If there were any other ghosts in the area, they blended in with the lifers and let the pair of new lovers celebrate what they had finally, finally discovered.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm sidras-tak on tumblr, come chat!


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